Diagnostic procedures and systems in a manufacturing environment contribute to the uptime of a manufacturing process by reducing the mean time to repair (MTTR). In general, the basic mechanism of diagnostic systems involves comparing an actual state of a process with a desired state for the process at a particular point in time. The desired state may be a particular equipment configuration, a product configuration, a process or product behavior, a product time relation, or other possible states. Unfortunately, the amount of time needed to configure the desired behavior can greatly exceed the effort to develop the controls or control systems used on the plant floor during the implementation of the manufacturing process. This enormous effort to develop diagnostic methods and systems may stem from an attempt to capture all potential failure modes.